


Snakebit

by AcceleratedStall



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: A 100 in Repair but a 0 in Common Sense, Exotic Pets, Gen, Humor, Mad Science, This courier probably took the Animal Friend perk, Weird Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21689800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcceleratedStall/pseuds/AcceleratedStall
Summary: After delivering the eggs of a fearsome predator to Red Lucy at the Thorn, the Courier has one left over. Arcade Gannon has multiple objections.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	Snakebit

Arcade Gannon had few reasons to be grateful to Mr. House, whoever, or whatever, he was. House’s Strip was an eyesore and a money pit, a Versailles for the post-nuclear age. Yet, Arcade had to admit, the suite in his casino that he had granted Courier Six - and by her generosity, Arcade as well - was a comfortable place to spend the night. Usually, waking up here was downright relaxing compared to the Freeside bedlam to which he was accustomed.

Usually.

The kitchen counter is bare this morning, but for a single thing - a large, brownish egg, sitting alone on a dinner plate. It’s… foreboding, somehow, and a moment passes before Arcade can figure out the reason.

In the meantime, two pairs of eyes wake from slumber in the corner of the room - the cyberdogs Six is keeping. Rex stretches, the servos in his robotic hind leg issuing a soft hissing sound -

Hissing. That’s why. It’s a nightstalker egg. The cave full of them had been an uneventful journey for Six, who strode among the creatures with the calm self-assurance of the Garrett twins counting the day’s profits at the Atomic Wrangler. Arcade, on the other hand, nearly had his throat torn out.

Defying Rex’s pleading gaze, Arcade abandons thoughts of breakfast at the Lucky 38 and gets in the elevator to leave. This anxiety was silly, and there were experiments at the Old Mormon Fort to run. Maybe there was nothing to worry about. Maybe the Courier was just going to make some kind of weird omelet when she got back from… whatever she was doing that morning. Wait, why was that something to be _hopeful_ for?

-

He’s an educated man. He ought to have known wishful thinking when he saw it. Evening, and the egg is still there.

Not only that, it’s now under some kind of home-made incubator, apparently fashioned entirely from the contents of a Lucky 38 janitorial closet. Credit where it’s due - not many people would be able to improvise something like this in an afternoon. Six, however, has yet to brag. In fact, seated at a table on the other end of the room, her face buried in a book, she has yet to say anything at all.

“So, um, Six,” Arcade begins.

Tousled brown hair and glasses emerge from above the book cover, and Courier Six bursts to life. “Arcade! Welcome back! How’d it go at the Mormon Fort today? Any progress?”

No time for that. “What’s with-“

“-the egg?” the Courier finishes for him.

“Yes. Weren’t we supposed to give those eggs to - what was her name. The crazy lady that kept flirting with you.”

“Red Lucy,” Courier Six supplies, “and we were, but I kept one.”

“Uh, for what?” A moment too late, Arcade recalls the old saying about not asking a question if one doesn’t want to know the answer.

Six tilts her head to one side. “I guess it’s kind of an experiment? I’m going to try and hatch it.”

“You’re a lunatic.”

Rather than respond, Six rises from her chair; the other cyberdog, the one that didn’t formerly belong to the King, trots over to meet her. Come to think of it, Arcade should probably figure out just where the heck she came from, Six’s answers haven’t exactly been informative.

Six kneels down and rubs the cyborg dog’s cheeks with both hands, but turns to face Arcade again.

“Well, we established a couple of things in the cave. Nightstalkers might be oviparous like rattlesnakes, but they’re clearly highly social, and mothers rear their young.”

“Can’t wait to see where you’re going with this one.”

“So they’re like coyotes.”

“I mean, sure, in the same way that a plasma rifle is _like_ a child’s BB gun.”

“Whereas coyotes are a lot like dogs. And dogs are like cyberdogs.”

“You might be skipping a few steps there,” Arcade warns.

“So if when the egg hatches, I have Rex and Roxie here be surrogate parents, and the nightstalker pup imprints on them, socializes itself as a dog, and tolerates humans.”

“Tolerates _you_ , maybe.”

“Come on Arcade, it has to be worth a try!” Six whines. “I guarantee you won’t be hassled by any Freeside muggers while taking a nightstalker for a walk!”

“Because it will have ripped my face off already,” Arcade answers.

“I thought you were a man of science!”

“And I thought… well a lot of different things, but not that you’d do _that_.” He gestures in the general direction of the… apparatus containing the egg.

Courier Six gives Arcade a conspicuous pout, then goes quiet, averting her gaze from his as she prepares a meal for the two cyberdogs.

Arcade sighs. “I suppose that, upon review, sharing a suite with a nightstalker egg may be one of the less dangerous things I’ve done in your company.”

She tilts her head back to gaze at the ceiling. “I may have spent so long diving down radioactive mine shafts that I’ve forgotten what other people find to be acceptable risk.”

“It occurs to me that I may have followed you down several of those mine shafts.”

“Still. I shouldn’t have assumed how you’d react.” She sighs, drumming her fingers on the countertop. “Wait, I’ve got an idea! Um, you might want to spend the next couple of nights in Freeside while I work this out.”

-

The next couple of nights in Freeside involve studying the scalability of a home-made Stimpak recipe, sorting medical records, and waking up two hours past midnight to discover that a junkie is trying to burn down the Old Mormon Fort for some reason. Though he wouldn’t dare speak it aloud, Arcade does in fact take a quiet relief in heading to the north gate of the Strip to see what the Courier has been up to.

“It’s ready!” she beams, seemingly unconcerned by the baleful gaze of the Securitrons. “Come on, come on and see!”

“The egg? Because I’m not going inside the Lucky 38 if that’s the case,” Arcade warns.

“No, no, not the egg. Follow me!” She bounds through the slowly opening gate and Arcade can do nothing but dumbly follow.

Well, the Lucky 38 is still standing. That’s an encouraging sign. And while the empty casino floor is still undeniably creepy, it doesn’t smell like burnt circuitry or blood, and doesn’t set off a Geiger counter either. So whatever she’s been up to hasn’t gotten into the ventilation system - also a good sign. As the elevator doors are just about to open to the presidential suite, Courier Six warns, “Oh, by the way, I hope you weren’t planning to use the bathtub in here for anything.”

Bad sign.

Six ushers Arcade into the bathroom, then seems to hitch for a moment. “Wait a sec. Gotta disconnect the power supply.” She ducks behind the shower curtain enclosing the aforementioned bathtub - it seems to have a bit more inertia than normal, somehow - and reemerges holding two microfusion cells. “Okay!”

The bathtub now appears to house a new device. Its function is not immediately obvious, but there seems to be a heavy screen of some kind hanging off the shower head, parts from several old television sets, metal clips and rollers, and… maybe that piece used to be part of a sentry bot?

“I, um,” Arcade begins. “What does it _do_?”

“It’s an X-ray machine! I thought of borrowing one from the Followers, but they need theirs, you know? So I built one myself.”

“Uh, great?” He pulls back the shower curtain a bit further to look at some of the parts up close.

“You should probably wash your hands after touching that. It’s lead-lined now. Tried to seal it up as best I could but you never know.”

“I see.”

“With this, I thought, I could monitor the development of the embryo, and when it was ready, take it someplace outside city limits where nobody will be in danger when it hatches. You wouldn’t have to come, could just be me and the cyberdogs.”

“That’s… thoughtful?” Arcade reaches a finger towards his chin - then catches himself and turns to the sink for some soap. “So does it work?”

“Of course it does! I wouldn’t have brought you in to see it if it didn’t!” Six replies cheerfully, wiping a grease stain off her temple with a monogrammed Lucky 38 towel. “Checked it out this morning, even!”

“Find anything?” Again, don’t ask the question if you don’t want to know the answer.

Suddenly Courier Six seems crestfallen. “Yeah. The egg I kept doesn’t seem to have been fertilized, nothing’s developing in there. Too bad.”

“Oh. That’s…” the best news Arcade has heard all day, actually.

“It’s okay though!” She brightens up again. “Just means the nightstalker reproductive cycle is more complicated than I thought! Want to help me dissect it?”

“Not really.”

When Julie Farkas asks him how traveling with the Courier has been going the next time he’s in Freeside, he tells her it has been uneventful.


End file.
